Notable series based on movies

"Alice" Based on the Martin Scorsese film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." The sitcom version had a very different tone, but it lasted for nine seasons beginning in 1976.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Creator Joss Whedon found more success for his teenage heroine on TV, where Sarah Michelle Gellar slayed vampires from 1997-2003.

"Friday Night Lights" Neither version was a hit, but both garnered critical acclaim. The series ran on NBC from 2006-11.

"In the Heat of the Night" The Oscar-winning film of 1967 waited over 20 years for a TV adaptation. When it arrived in 1988, it lasted for eight years.

"The Odd Couple" In contrast, "The Odd Couple" went from Broadway smash to hit movie to successful sitcom in just five years. The series ran from 1970-75.

... AND SOME FAILURES

"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures" Ran on Fox for seven episodes in the summer of 1992.

"Delta House" "Animal House," the smash film comedy of 1978, was loosely adapted into this decidedly non-smash of a sitcom that ran from January to April, 1979 on ABC.

"Ferris Bueller" The 1986 hit movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" spawned this series, which lasted just three months on NBC in 1990.

"Serpico" David Birney replaced Al Pacino in the series version, and failure replaced success. "Serpico" ran for 14 episodes on NBC in 1976-77

"Uncle Buck" Kevin Meany starred as the title character for one season, 1990-91, on CBS.

Like the castaways of “Lost” opening that hatch or Jerry and George solving the problem of “the roommate switch,” the television world seems to be resolving one of its more intractable problems: How to adapt a theatrical movie into a successful TV series.

After decades of uneasy, largely unsuccessful attempts at conversion, suddenly there are several series that have turned source material from a film into an ongoing story.

• “Fargo” debuted on FX last week, taking the setting and tone of the Coen brothers 1996 classic and creating an entirely new story and set of characters out of the same building blocks.

• “Bates Motel,” in its second season on A&E, tells the story of how the terrifying Norman Bates of “Psycho” became a serial killer. The gothic black comedy delves into the relationship of Norman and his smothering mother, Norma.

• “About a Boy” turns the 2002 Hugh Grant/Toni Collette film into an NBC sitcom that retains the movie’s character-driven humor while transferring the action from London to San Francisco.

• “Hannibal,” also on NBC, takes Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs” and places him in a much earlier setting in his “career.”

• Joining these starting Thursday night will be CBS’ new comedy “Bad Teacher,” an adaptation of the 2011 movie starring Cameron Diaz.

It’s not as though television hasn’t been trying for years to cash in on the goodwill built up by hit movies. But by and large, the results were not good. From “Animal House” to “War of the Worlds,” the conversion was most likely to result in mediocrity or outright failure. Witness “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” “Shaft,” “Serpico,” “Private Benjamin,” “Ferris Bueller,” “Uncle Buck,” “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures.”

Even the successes offered little to celebrate. “Alice” lasted for nine seasons on ABC by smothering the subtleties of Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” in the thick gravy of 1970s sitcom inanities. Kiss my grits, indeed.

Norman Jewison’s taut, racially charged Oscar winner “In the Heat of the Night” became a successful police procedural, but by necessity it filed off the edges of the uncomfortable relationship between Gillespie and Tibbs.

So why the change? Part of the explanation is the growth of serial storytelling. Rather than mash a two-hour movie down into a 22- or 43-minute format, modern TV series can stretch the stories out, giving the characters more room to breathe and grow.

There is also simply the growth of television as the preferred medium for the sort of character-driven, often offbeat stories that used to be the provenance of film.

“The entertainment business can pretend all they want, but the movie world has changed drastically, particularly in the last five or six years,” “Fargo” star Billy Bob Thornton told a gathering of TV critics. “When I was coming up, if you went to television from film, it meant something was wrong, you know. So you may as well be on, like, ‘Hollywood Squares.’

“The movies we were accustomed to doing, say, in the ’80s and ’90s into the early 2000s, they were the mid-level movies for studios and higher-budget independent films. And that’s especially where I lived. That doesn’t really exist anymore. The motion-picture studios make big-event movies, and they make broad comedies, and they make action movies and movies about where evidently vampires are all models.”

Although the movies-to-TV explosion is new, its modern incarnation traces back almost 20 years, to the birth of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” Joss Whedon wrote the film version and headed the far-superior TV version, where Buffy (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends could play out their relationships over a longer period and not be so freighted by the need to keep the plot driving forward.

Then “Friday Night Lights” proved that the format could work with more serious drama. Although the series struggled with ratings throughout its five seasons, it was critically acclaimed and well thought of within the TV industry, earnings gobs of nominations and awards.

They’ve proven that TV series can take the ideas from movies and expand on them, actually make them better rather than mashing them into tighter formats than the original films.

“Fargo” provides a particularly interesting example of the change. Warren Littlefield, one of the producers of the current series, was involved with an earlier adaptation, a pilot made in 1998 for CBS starring Edie Falco. It never went anywhere. Three years ago, Littlefield approached writer Noah Palmer to revive the series.

“I went, ‘It’s time,’” Littlefield said. “The world of television has changed.”

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